Rinfasciature ball shells

[NeighborJ]

 

Ok I've decided to start a thread about rinfasciature ball shells. I'm not at all experienced with these but I figured I'd give it a shot.

 

Wiley walked me thru a few steps then I winged the rest. I did make a few changes to the instructions due to Wiley's expression of disappointment with its burst strength.

 

Construction went as follows: 5 wraps of 30# virgin paper followed by the first spiking. Another 5 wraps of paper and another spiking. Then 2 wraps and very light spiking to finish the shell.

 

I didn't paste the string as instructed but the burst and construction did not suffer, I did not want to wait to ensure it was all dry. This shell was broken with a middle of the road oak BP, no booster. A 5" shell took a grand total of two hours to build and fire.

 

The biggest drawback I've found was the large flaming pices of paper coming down in the fall out. I had to calm down the neighbor when a pice landed in her yard still on fire. It is raining so I wasn't afraid of setting anything on fire but those large flaming bits could be a problem.

 

I do plan to make more of these due to their ease of construction and there are several changes I'm planning to make. I plan to use a spollette so I have something more secure to tie everything to and I do believe the pasted string might help break up the paper into smaller pices.

[OldMarine]

Since the paper isn't pasted I don't see why it couldn't be coated with a solution of sodium silcate to keep the flaming debris down some.

[NeighborJ]

I never thought of that, heck even baking soda should work.

[Mumbles]

A mixture of Borax and boric acid or a whole host of ammonium compounds also do the trick. I'd favor a thinned out sodium silicate though. You get fireproofing and additional confinement all in one.

 

Do you think the inner most layers of paper really does much? In cylinder shell rinfrasciature it's mostly to fireproof the string. I suppose it might give something to bite into a bit.

[OldMarine]

Now I'm wanting to try just a bit of tape and spiking on Marc's nesting hemis. If it'd work you'd have a shell in minutes.

[NeighborJ]

Do you think the inner most layers of paper really does much? In cylinder shell rinfrasciature it's mostly to fireproof the string. I suppose it might give something to bite into a bit.

 

I'm not shure if the first wraps of paper helped the burst a whole lot or even helped fireproof it any more than the other layers did. Like you said, the string didn't move after it was pulled tight and it did help give the shell the extra girth to fit the tube better. Any more than five or six ply makes it difficult to pleat it around the shell nicely so it worked out good to spread the plys between the two spikings.

 

I think I will cut the timing back as well as the lift charge. With a spollette I should be able to add some Ti for tracking purposes, other forms of rising effects just haven't panned out for me on rinf shells.

Edited November 17, 2017 by NeighborJ

[Col]

Now I'm wanting to try just a bit of tape and spiking on Marc's nesting hemis. If it'd work you'd have a shell in minutes.

I think non nesting would be ok as long as you paste over the joint. Using a 3-axis spiking pattern, you could put around 123ft of 1mm hemp on a 3" shell

[Wiley]

Neighbor, I used to have issues with smoldering paper coming back to the ground. My solution was to start breaking them harder, and building bigger shells

 

When I shot a pair of rin'ed 5" spherical shells, there wasn't even any smoldering stuff, let alone full-on flaming bits. I'm not sure why that might have happened, but I think pasted string is a good start. All string applied as spiking to a shell ought to be pasted. I just load up the horse, slather it with paste, let that soak in, apply more paste in a few minutes, then spike.

 

I only use cotton string to spike shells now. It's not ideal, but it's cheap and easy to get hold of. On mine, I believe I had 24 longitudinals on there after both wraps were added. I used 3 strands of 8 ply cotton. The paper is really just there to keep fire out of the shell, at least the way I made mine. All of the strength is in the string.

 

There also shouldn't be any loose paper on the shell, such as what I'm seeing around the fuse. Try using a spolette and spike up and down the spolette to choke the paper around it.

 

I believe I only used 3 turns of 30# for the rin, and 2 turns for the outer wrap. You should not need to wrap the unspiked shell in paper.

[Wiley]

Also, be sure to top-fuse things made with spolettes.

 

[NeighborJ]

I top fuse everything, it's darned good practice. By the way that excess paper around the time fuse got cut off to make room for the bucket and I counted 40 strands longitudinally on that shell. I'm fairly certain the flaming paper was the outer two layers, they were spiked lightly. The embers were most likely from the lift not the burst. Edited November 17, 2017 by NeighborJ

[Wiley]

Ah, dry lift wraps can definitely do what you saw. Usually that "stuff" stays close enough to the mortar that it's manageable.

[OldMarine]

I've been playing with a dummy shell tonight and I think I've got it figured out how to use the Maltese spiking method on 4" ball shells. It looks good and the 4 strands of jute lay down nicely. I plan to try only pasting the joint between hemis as Col suggested and using the Jute to provide confinement and buildup to fit the tube fairly well. It'll be fun and give me a chance to try my crude version of Tom's spiking station!

[NeighborJ]

That sounds like fun there Patrick. You gonna post your pics here?

[OldMarine]

Yeah, I'll fire a live one off first and then do some pics. I'm having a bit of a time figuring out the best way to finish the spiking since I only have the spollette to tie to. If you do that at the start and end I'm seeing way too much build up.

[NeighborJ]

OM I started with the half hitch and left a tail, then after spiking is complete I just tied off to that tail.

[pyropro]

If constructed well using proper break just paste your shell no need to string it up.Sometimes you can mess up your shell by doing this step

[starxplor]

Do you have a video of the process to go with the shell? A method that does not need time to dry would let me build non-plastic shells up north.

[NeighborJ]

This was my first rin'd' ball shell I didn't really want to video the process until I've gotten the kinks worked out. Thou it is simple and easy.